 Could be too weird and different for some
 Play style is different from most
 Story could come across confusing

Grade

A-

Killer 7 is a mind bending, tour de force, crazy and
sometimes confusing action adventure game by Capcom. They
have brought us many other successful franchises before, but
does Killer 7 have what it takes to compete with the
rest and stand up to the many high quality games that Capcom
has provided time and time again?

Killer 7 is the story about a group of assassins that
go by the name of The Killer 7. Are they one man or many?
What is exactly going on in this stylistic and somewhat disturbing
game? All this and more will cross your mind when playing
and trying to put a stop to the terrorist group known as the
Heavens Smiles. To tell you anything more about the story
would be a great travesty as this game partly strives on that
very thing to keep the player going. The experience this game
brings to the videogame tables is one you're likely not to
forget for a long time coming.

The gameplay is something not quite seen in a game before.
Your character has a set path he can walk on by pressing the
A button to move forward and hitting B to turn around. This
comes off very weird at first but overall it just takes getting
used to. While this limits the actually exploration aspect
in a way, it really doesn't because there are many moments
where you will come to junctions and have to decide whether
to enter a door or continue down the hallways, etc. While
exploring the various levels and trying to figure out the
puzzles and exactly what's going on you'll hear one of the
craziest laughs ever and that's the sign to pull your weapon
up with the R trigger. Once in weapon mode the game switches
to a first person viewpoint and the action parts of Killer
7 come into play. In this portion of the game you have
to take on the various Heavens Smiles and figure out their
weak points. Many of them have various strategies to destroying
them and this keeps the action from becoming really stale.
On almost every enemy there is a certain spot on there body
that when hit will instantly be destroyed. In the process
of killing the enemies you'll obtain thick blood and thin
blood. One is used for turning into serum and upgrading your
characters and the other is used for healing your character
or using their special abilities. All the characters have
attributes that can be upgraded. You can choose to focus on
just one character or divvy out the serum to all of them.
All the Killers have certain traits that make them suitable
for getting by in certain situations. Need to pick that lock
or jump to higher ground? Coyote Smith can do the job. How
about needing to get through a cracked wall? Mask de Smith
can easily take care of that with his grenade launchers. Each
and every Killer 7 is used to proceed through the game at
various times along with the other puzzles that you'll just
have to use your brain to figure out.

While Capcom opted to go for a comic cell shading style I
definitely have to say that this goes great ways to give this
game appeal and style. It just oozes quality all around. Each
character is designed differently and almost everyone will
end up picking a favorite by the time they've completed the
title. The backgrounds are mostly that and there really isn't
any interaction with the objects that are around unless they
are important to the overall flow of the game. Each missions
has a very different look and feel to it as well. At one point
you'll be in what seems to be a pretty empty town and in another
mission you will find yourself at an amusement park, everything
has a visual style that's hard to compare to anything else
out there at the moment. The visual style does not disappoint
and really compliments the game and its overall style. Also,
it should be noted that each and every characters clothes
changes between each of the levels, a neat little addition
to keep the characters from growing stale on the eyes.

So when first booting up the game you'll immediately know
that the sound is going to play a interesting role in this
game and great thought was put into the implementation of
the soundtrack. The moment you turn the game on, the company
logos are flashed and accompanied by the sound of a gunshot
and someone laughing. This fades into the Killer 7
title screen with a very odd pitched soundtrack. You select
your new game option and hear a maniacal laugh. This then
brings up the difficulty selection screen with basic normal
and hard modes. When the normal mode is highlighted the soundtrack
plays at a normal pace but switch it over to hard mode and
the music one-ups and totally get a faster beat. Now while
this is nothing really special it just really shows that this
whole game as a package was put together wonderfully and I
really feel that the developers of this game did exactly what
they wanted to do with it. As for the rest of the soundtrack,
the game has many different songs that play over the course
of the game and while some are played again at times usually
each level has its own style of different music. It could
be said that the style of the music has a pseudo techno sound
to it at times. The sound effects are also very clear and
as minor as it may be each and every character has a different
sound to their walking/running animation, which is just a
nice touch. Weapon sound effects come out clear and easy to
tell apart whether your using Con's dual pistols or Mask's
grenade guns. The last thing that I should is the voice actors.
They all do a wonderful job and really bring some of these
characters to life. I might add Cam Clark does a wonderful
job as a character in the game by the name of Ulmeyda. The
words these characters say are definitely out this world and
severely inappropriate for governors to hear. They throw the
F bomb and many others out there in the process of the game
so if you're prone to dislike cursing then this game is definitely
not for you. This game is dirty.

Now there are a few things that people might not like. The
first and foremost is the fact that the game is on rails,
so to speak. Some people will just not be able to really get
a grasp on this. Another small problem I noticed is that sometimes
the camera would get stuck on the opposite side of the character
and I couldn't see a thing ahead of me. This is easily fixable
with a press of the Z button though and shouldn't be much
of a problem to most. Other then that some might be under
the impression that Killer 7 is a straight up first
person shooter and they will most likely immediately walk
away from this game with a bad taste. On another side note,
the game is filled with so much mature subject matter that
its definitely earned its mature rating with based off visuals
and language alone. This one is not for priest, peaceful folk,
or other easily disturbed people.

Killer 7 has been a long time in the making and a
title that most were confused on how it was played for the
longest time. It's a different approach to games and its something
that's unique in a market filled with GTA's, First
person shooters, etc. Killer 7 brings something new
into the spectrum and I applaud Capcom for bringing out such
a title. If your looking for a good mature action/ adventure
game that makes you think in more ways then one, do yourself
a favor and pick up Killer 7.

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